The ringing floods Arthur’s ears as he flings the back door wide. It bangs against the wall, and the force sends something crashing to the floor inside. The shatter of glass pulses new energy through him, and he explodes from the back porch into the grass, skipping the steps altogether. He sprints for his hut. His body hums with adrenaline, his hands vibrate, and he has just enough sense left to hold in his scream.
He leaps over the boys’ bicycles idle in the grass, his heart pounding as hard as his feet on the ground. There’s no time to look around for the guards. He keeps his eyes straight ahead on the horizon, the lone sliver of sunlight dying against the gathering gray of the storm. His nostrils flare, his throat gulps air. He has started a chain reaction he knows he can’t escape. He has only a matter of seconds to try.
The last few steps to his hut, he can hear the frenzied barking and scratching coming from inside. The feeble weight of the door moves aside easily, and Moti wriggles out and is upon him, smelling the house on his clothes, the tobacco smoke, the spilled tea, and his own sweat underneath.
“Let’s go!” Arthur turns and skids around the back of the hut, trusting she will follow. As he tears through the brush, he feels her warm breath on his heels. He dares to look back to be sure. The whites of her eyes glow, spit flies from her fangs. She knows as well as he does that they must run.
He has no plan. He has only this moment, only this primal flight. He prays the trees will hide them, the shadows will tell no one. But the shouts of the guards are unmistakable. They sound far back, like something underwater, but all the same, they mean one thing: they have discovered what he has done.
His legs burst with newfound energy. As he scrambles over the terrain, clawing at tree trunks and vines, Moti effortlessly springs ahead, and he swears he can see her float over fallen trees and moss-covered stones like a spirit. She is mesmerizing in her movement. Muscle and sinew ripple underneath her coat, the rhythmic expansion and contraction carrying her body through the forest.
She leads him deeper into the jungle, and he forces his legs to churn faster, faster. Over the sounds of his own steps snapping twigs underfoot, he can hear the guards coming closer. He must keep his eyes forward if he has any hope. Light flashes as lightning roils in the sky. For a fraction of a second, everything around them is outlined in contrast, every leaf vein, every wrinkle in the tree bark, every dust mote in the air.
A memory flares in his mind: rushing through fields as a child, an afternoon spent with friends cut short by a monsoon thunderstorm, the fear of his mother propelling him home down the rows of jute. He remembers the exhilaration of such unbridled movement, the happiness of pushing his body to its highest speed, unbound by walls, perimeters, civility. It feels like a different life, a different person, the boy running free in the fields. It is the taste of rain on his tongue, it is the scent of damp soil, it is the sensation of his arms swinging back and forth with so much force that he almost believes they will fall off, it is all this that brings the past screaming back, the sweetness of his youth, the oblivion of his childhood. But his body is aged now. He feels it slowing. His breaths come heavy and hard. He cannot keep up. The guards come closer, so close he can hear the bandoliers jangling against their chests, their boot buckles rattling. He cannot keep up.
When Arthur feels the first hand close around his waist, he looks ahead at the streak of white as Moti disappears for the last time.
“Run ahead,” he chokes out to her. I’m right behind you.